


metamorphoses

by mayfriend



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Peggy Carter, F/F, Falling In Love, Femslash, Past Rape/Non-con, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Pregnancy, Rape Recovery, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 06:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: For lesbiansassemble's Femslash Writing Challenge.Prompt: Pregnancy.Peggy discovers she is pregnant after being raped during her investigations into Leviathan. She makes the choice to keep the baby, not because she wants to become a housewife or something equally mundane, but because she can’t blame the foetus for her assault. Cue the SSR, who thought very little of their only female agent before then, going utterly ballistic over the fact that said female agent was attacked, and is now pregnant, and also, oh, unmarried. They’re mad as hell and hunt down her rapist like the hounds of hell.Meanwhile, Peggy struggles to deal with the way the people who know what happened treat her, and how the ones who don’t know assume that she’s some floozy or that she has a husband at home. She almost loses her mind several times as she’s forced to suffer the indignities of morning sickness, unwanted touching of her bump, offering up of seats and being strictly banned from missions because she’s in the family way.The only bright spot is that Angie Martinelli is with her every step of the way.





	metamorphoses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesbiansassemble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiansassemble/gifts).



> I'm Cartinelli trash, and have been for a long time, so when I saw lesbianassemble's Femslash Writing Challenge it felt like a sign. Despite it being a sign, I am 7 days late due to this last week having been my freshers week at uni, but I'm still super glad I did this.
> 
> As the tags warn, this fic does contain Rape/Non-con and references to it, so please only go further if you are confident it won't be triggering for you.

The day after, Peggy goes through her day as normal. She wakes up, curls her hair, puts on her stockings and lipstick, pastes an expression of neutrality on her face before she leaves the safety of her room. She meets Angie for breakfast, helps her friend sneak some hash browns into her handbag, kisses the waitress goodbye on both cheeks and breathes in her perfume like it's the only thing that’s sustaining her. (Maybe it is.)

She goes to the SSR, spies on men who don’t even see her when she’s standing in plain sight, tries not to hate them all and mostly fails. She ignores them calling her _honey, darling, Marge,_ even after everything she did during the war _._ Jarvis tries to call her, and she doesn’t answer the phone. She goes back to the Griffith immediately after work, hopes that Mrs Fry doesn’t notice how her eyes shine when she asks her how her day’s been. She hasn’t eaten all day, she thinks she’ll be sick if she does. Her hands shake as she rolls her stockings down her legs, and she curls up and cries silently on her bed.

* * *

After the doctor tells her the news, she thinks very, very seriously about aborting. She knows people (oh, alright, she knows Howard, who has probably paid for more abortions than she’s eaten hot dinners) who know people who could do it hush-hush - nobody would ever have to know. It could just be a footnote in her history, redacted like so much of her past already is. She isn’t showing, won’t show for another month or maybe two if she’s lucky, and even then she might be able to pass it off as simple weight gain rather than the terrible truth. She could erase this, erase him, erase what he did to her-

Except she can’t. It’s not as easy as that.

Even if she does get rid of the- the _parasite,_ the thing growing inside her, it won’t change what’s already happened. It won’t change that she can still smell his stale breath, that the bruises he gave her aren’t quite faded, that most nights she falls asleep with a gun in her hand and the door locked and relocked multiple times.

_Angie,_ she thinks after she’s poured out all her spirits, just in case, _Angie._

It’s the first time in their friendship that she’s knocking on the brunette’s door at some ungodly hour in the morning and not the other way around, but it’s about damn time. Angie looks unfairly adorable in her matching pajama set, nightmask and all, and Peggy almost cries when she lets her in without a word.

“What’s up, English?”

She says the nickname softly, carefully, like she knows just how close Peggy is to breaking right now. She lays her palm gently on Peggy’s knuckles, and just like that, she is sobbing, ugly and hoarse, and Angie is hushing her like she’s a child, like she’s her mother, like she’s just scraped her knee and needs someone to kiss it better.

But it is so much worse than that. So much worse.

* * *

For a moment, when she wakes up the next morning curled up in Angie’s bed, she doesn’t know how she got there. She doesn’t remember what has happened, what’s been done to her, and she mourns the blissful ignorance of those few seconds when it all comes flooding back.

She doesn’t know how long she lays there, staring blankly at the door until it opens and Angie enters, looking tentative and a little nervous, arms laden down with pilfered breakfast items. “I told Mrs Fry that you had the flu, so that’ll give you a couple of days to figure things out. It’s too late for you to go into work this morning, so if you give me the number I’ll call in sick for you. I’ve got a few days holiday saved up from when I covered New Years for Betty, so I’ll be right here with you. Alright?”

There’s a terrible moment where Peggy almost starts crying again, but instead she manages to blink back the tears and swallow the thick lump in her throat. “Angie- I-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m amazing and you love me,” the girl banters, cutting off her choked words of thanks, the concern in her eyes in contrast with her light tone.

“You are,” Peggy breathes, almost overcome by it all, “and I do.”

Angie blushes a bright pink.

* * *

True to her word, Angie doesn’t leave her for the next two days, besides from going down to grab supplies from the buffet. Peggy would go mad from cabin fever if it wasn’t for her and the way she makes her laugh whenever the walls start closing in, doing impressions of Mrs Fry and some of the other girls and patrons at the diner.

“I’m keeping it,” Peggy tells Angie in the evening of the second day. She’s practiced saying those words in the bathroom all afternoon, practiced how to make them into more of a statement than a question. By the look on Angie’s face, she isn’t sure if she’s succeeded, but Angie doesn’t call her on it. She doesn’t ask her to explain either, for which Peggy is eternally grateful - she’s not sure if she could.

She’s keeping it because she wants to. She’s keeping it because she has to. She’s keeping it because she has never run from anything in her life, and she’s not going to start now.

“How are we going to do this then?” Angie asks, and Peggy gratefully takes the chance to stop thinking about the _whys_ and focus on the _hows._ She needs to tell Mrs Fry - there’s no way that the elderly landlady will let her stay if she suspects Peggy got into the family way by fooling around, so Peggy needs to be honest with her. Mostly.

The key details stay the same: she was out alone, after dark. She got attacked by a man who took her by surprise from behind. He got away. She didn’t tell anyone at the time, because she was ashamed and she wanted to forget. The doctor told her she was pregnant at the start of the week.

Angie comes with her, a silent shadow at her shoulder whose presence gives her more strength than she could have imagined. Mrs Fry doesn’t react the way that Peggy expects - oh, she insists that Peggy files a police report, as she’d known she would, but she also gets a bit teary and insists on making her a strong cup of tea right there and then. “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” the matron says, her old eyes far away even as she speaks, “this is- I had hoped, by opening the Griffith that- well. Well. Miss Carter, you have nothing to worry about, not from me. Your condition is not your fault, and you are welcome at the Griffith for as long as you wish to stay.”

It is a battle to smile at her, but Peggy does just about manage it.

Mrs Fry escorts Peggy to the police station, and stays with her as she makes her statement and gives a description - as lacking as it is - of her attacker. Caucasian male, over six foot tall, dark hair, heavyset. Half of the dock workers in the city fit that description. By the time she’d managed to get free from where he’d pinned and tied her up, he was long gone, and the only image she had of him - of her rapist, of the father of her child - was one seen out of the corner of her eye.

“Don’t you worry now, ma’am,” the police officer who’s been interviewing her says, “we’ll catch the bastard.”

Privately, Peggy doubts it. If he got the drop on her, then New York’s Finest have no chance at all.

* * *

A side effect of making the report is that the next morning when Peggy forces herself to go into work for the first time in three days, Dooley is already waiting for her. “Carter,” he barks out no sooner has she stepped foot in the building, “my office. Now.”

_He knows, he knows, he knows._ She pushes her apprehension down, down, keeps her head held high and walks through the bullpen like everything is normal. But it’s not. All the other agents, her colleagues to whom she is invisible, are looking at her. _They know, they know, they know._

She shuts Dooley’s office door behind her and keeps her face carefully blank as he draws the blinds. Then he turns to her, stiff, his expression severe. “Carter, you got-” he chokes on whatever he was going to say, swallows, and picks up a file from his desk. She already knows what it is, what it will say. “God damn it, woman, why would you be down at the docks after dark?”

“I was following a lead on the Howard Stark case,” she says, and doesn’t fidget as he drags a hand over his face in- what? Disbelief? Disgust? She doesn’t care what he thinks, she realises. She doesn’t have to justify herself to him. “I came upon a stockpile of crates, and I clearly found _something_ because there was somebody waiting for me. He hit me from behind. I didn’t see his face.”

She has told him the truth, or at least part of it. “Why on God’s green earth would you go _alone?_ For that matter, why the hell did you think you could conduct your own investigation without my say-so? This could have been prevented, Carter, and now-!”

“You think I don’t know that?” she restrains herself from hissing at him, just, “I went on my own for the same reason I didn’t tell you I had a new lead - because you would just hand it off to one of your favourites, Thompson most likely, and sent me back to my desk. I am just as much of an agent as any of them-”

“But you’re not!” Dooley exploded. “You’re not! You did your part in the war, while all the men were away, and you must have done some decent work if you were recommended by Colonel Phillips, but you are _not_ like the men out there, and this proves it! You are vulnerable in ways that they aren’t, in ways they never will be!”

“And yet, I found a new lead when all your other agents were twiddling their thumbs, waiting for a tip off,” she snaps, “Me _,_ not them. And I _found_ those inventions-”

“It doesn’t matter what you found!” He roars, “Don’t you get that, you dumb chit? You rushed in, didn’t have back up, and now you’re carrying a bastard child and we’re no closer to Stark!”

It takes everything she has, everything she is, to swallow down her anger. To uncurl her hands from fists, to keep her voice level and her spine straight as she stands before him. “Howard Stark is not the man you are looking for,” she tells him, “and I will prove that, with or without you, pregnant or not. If you insist on firing me, do, but know that I won’t stop looking and you will lose all authority over me and my actions.”

For a long moment, they look at each other. A vein throbs in Dooley’s forehead. “Get back to your desk,” he finally spits, “you’re suspended from the field, indefinitely. If you even think about going out there without my say so-” the very thought seems to enrage him, his face turning puce, “I will personally put you on the no-hire list of every single intelligence agency this side of the Atlantic. Get out of my sight.”

“Sir,” she says with a nod, and turns on her heel.

Every eye follows her as she walks through the bullpen, and she pretends they’re just bugs to squash under her feet.

* * *

Her lunch break has never been so welcome. Usually, she eats at her desk, but today she needs to get out of the office, away from her colleague’s not-so-subtle glances and Krzeminsky’s off-colour jokes about unmarried women being in the family way.

Outside the building, she closes her eyes and just focuses on the feeling of the wind on her face. She eats her sandwich methodically, quarter by quarter, and when fifteen minutes have passed she’s done and far less likely to lose her cool.

But something is different when she goes in. Men who before had been craning their necks around to catch a glimpse of her are blankly staring at their desks or files as if they’re the most fascinating things they’ve ever seen. Her brow furrows as she looks around the room only to catch sight of Sousa and Thompson - a more unlikely duo she couldn’t imagine - standing in the corner looking very pleased with themselves, and more than a little fierce.

She pointedly does not comment on the sudden change in the behaviour of the SSR agents, and they pointedly don’t mention ever having done anything. That night, Sousa asks Thompson out for a drink and Thompson says yes quicker than perhaps he should have done, not even bothering do go through the song and dance of _maybe, not sure, I’ll check._

That night when she goes home to Angie and Angie asks how her first day back went, she can honestly say _fine._ Not good, not alright, but fine. She didn’t know if she’d ever have fine again in the morning.

* * *

A few weeks of Sousa and Thompson teaming up to eyeball anyone who wants to make a cheap joke about her condition is all it takes for the SSR to almost forget she’s pregnant. They treat her like they always did - like a secretary, a pretty, pointless object that keeps getting underfoot.

Her waistline thickens, and she gives up her fitted trousers and high-waisted skirts with regret. Angie manages to soften the blow by reminding her that soon enough she can have them back. The maternity clothes that Mrs Fry gives her are more feminine than she’s partial to, all lace and pastels, but she wears them, knowing that she can’t afford to lose the woman’s kindness, knowing that Mrs Fry didn’t have to buy them.

Peggy has enough tact to know not to ask where her child is now.

She almost forgets herself, sometimes. The morning sickness had been blissfully brief for her, and she forces herself to stay fit no matter how much she wants to curl up into a ball and die sometimes. Angie makes her ridiculously gorgeous milkshakes at the diner, and she pretends it's because Angie’s her friend, not because of the baby. When Angie tells her she’s glowing, she blushes, and wants to attribute it to Angie thinking she’s beautiful, not because she’s pregnant. She’s always been honest with herself, separating what she wants and what she has. There is a gulf between the two, almost uncrossable.

(Almost. Angie, _Angie_. She wants Angie, she has Angie, she’ll have Angie in any way she can.)

Peggy can’t always ignore it, this thing growing inside of her, and not just because of how it kicks on her bladder and twists in her stomach, not just because of her inability to be in the same room as raw meat and her lack of monthly’s. Other people notice it, comment on it. When she’s out, she gets women reaching out and touching her like she’s not a complete stranger, like she has given them permission. A steely look doesn’t work on all of them, and even if it had, there are hundreds more to take their place. She gets asked out of the blue about how many months she is, how long she’s been married - that last question so intrusive and so impossible to answer that Angie buys her a cheap little ring to wear on her fourth finger - and what names she’s thinking of. But still, it becomes routine, even those hated touches, and Peggy can bear it all as long as she’s allowed to forget once in a while.

She regrets all that forgetting, when it all comes rushing back five months later when Thompson and Sousa - quite the pair, especially after Thompson started being less of an arse and more of an agent - march a terribly familiar man into the SSR.

They were just out of her direct line of sight, so she hadn’t seen his face, not properly, not really, but she knows all the same as she sees his distinctive bow legged gait, his broad shoulders, his calloused hands. She doesn’t do anything stupid, like cry out, or gasp, or drop her mug on the floor like Betty Carver would. She’s a professional, she knows how to keep her feelings hidden, but it’s harder than its been in years.

Peggy finishes with the document she’s currently spell checking for Jones, gets out of her chair as swiftly as she can with her added bulk and compromised centre of gravity and makes for the ladies toilets. It’s empty - it’s always empty, the girls round the front in the phone company section have their own, and she’s the only female agent the SSR has - and she’s grateful.

She locks the first cubicle door, put down the toilet seat, sits down and buries her face in her hands. The simple gold plated ring Angie gave her a month before is cool on her cheek. She doesn’t think she could cry if she wanted to - she has faced worse than this, faced worse than him, and done it all with dry eyes. It’s part of her, this mask, this illusion of strength so powerful that it overwhelms the real her, the her that is proud and capable, yes, filled with righteous anger that burns and a hatred that chokes, but afraid and alone too.

She allotts herself five minutes to gather herself, and when it’s over, she leaves the cubicle, washes her hands under ice cold water (because if she’s hurting then at least she’s feeling) and goes back out into the office. Nobody appears to have noted her absence, why would they? She goes to the toilet much more frequently now than she did six months before. She slides back into her chair, and lets out a breath.

The man - if he can even be called a man - is nowhere to be seen. She figures he’s been taken to an interrogation room. Peggy swallows. Do they know it’s him? They can’t. The SSR still hasn’t figured out anything more about Leviathan besides their name, even with their two-way typewriter. If she doesn’t say anything, nobody will know.

If she doesn’t say anything, nobody will make him pay. And she wants it to be her.

“Chief Dooley, sir,” she says, mind made up as she raps on her boss’ door and pokes her head into his office, “do you have a moment?”

* * *

It takes longer than she’d like for Dooley to agree to admit her into the interrogation room. It’s only when she barters with getting him the Howling Commandos (sorry, boys) for a jaunt to Russia in exchange that he begins to listen.

“You don’t go in alone,” he says.

“I go in alone,” she counters, “You’ll be right next door, watching. Right outside the door, even. If anything happens, I’ll leave immediately and you’ll be able to take over.”

Dooley grinds his teeth together. “Carter, the last time you and this sack of shit were alone-”

“That’s why I have to do this,” she snaps, “Chief, please. If you care about me at all, even the smallest bit-”

“If I cared about you at all, I’d have fired you six months ago,” Dooley mutters to himself, conflicted, before finally nodding. “You have ten minutes, that’s all. And I’ll see about adding rape to his docket.”

She thinks about telling him that keeping her on was the only thing that kept her sane. She doesn’t, in the end - it would be a lie of omission. It’s this, and it’s Angie. Always Angie.

“Hello, Mr Zandow,” Peggy says as she walks into the interrogation room, passing Thompson on the way out. He’s clearly been informed; his face is twisted in an expression of concern, but he says nothing. She wonders if that’s Dooley’s work or Sousa’s.

He looks smaller than she remembers him, but he’s seated and she’s standing. His gaze is fixed on his manacled hands, his dark hair greasy and unkempt. He’s clearly a strong man, with thick arms and broad shoulders, but he’s a little older than she expected as well. Late forties, middle fifties - he has the kind of face that makes it hard to tell. Wasted in ways that tell of a life lived with a bottle in his hand.

She hasn’t prayed in years, but in that moment, she prays her child will inherit nothing of their father. She doesn’t think her heart could bear it.

He looks up, maybe because he’s curious, but his expression shutters when he sees her face, and when he sees her stomach, his whole body recoils before he can stop it. Oh, he remembers her. She smiles at him, all teeth, and doesn’t let herself shake. “Shall we begin?” She asks, not really asking for permission.

“Where were you on the evening of September the twenty fourth?”

He swallows. Says nothing.

She repeats herself. “Mr Zandow, where were you on the evening of September the twenty fourth? We have witnesses that place you at the docks from eight pm-”

“You know where I was,” the man snaps.

She looks at him blankly, like she hasn’t the foggiest idea what he’s saying. “Is that a confession, Mr Zandow?”

He stiffens further than he already had, wound up in a ball of tension. “I want the other guy. The guy from before.”

“Unfortunately for you, Mr Zandow, this is not about what you want. I repeat: is that a confession?”

He hunches, then purposefully straightens, shows how much he still wants to hide by the slope of his shoulders. He should never play poker. His eyes dart to her left hand, where Angie’s ring sits like it was made for her and not bought from the pawn-shop for fifteen dollars. “How far- you have a fella? You got someone to look after-”

She looks at him, glacial. “Is that a confession, Mr Zandow?”

He swallows. “If I say- if I tell them-” he nods towards the two-sided mirror, “will you- will you tell me?”

She says nothing. Leans back in her chair, lets a hand with blood-red painted nails rest on her swollen middle. They sit like that for one minute, two- she knows that Thompson had been having trouble with his carrot and stick routine, but she’s got a rather unique angle, and he breaks before the third minute is up. “I didn’t know what I was getting into, okay, I’m just the hired muscle, I don’t know nothing about Stark or those boxes, I was just meant to guard them, and hell, I’m only fucking human, lady-”

“You were at the docks on September the twenty-fourth, weren’t you, Mr Zandow? For the tape, please.”

“-yeah. Yeah, I was.”

“Who hired you?”

“Leviathan, I dunno no names, Russians, but no accents- they didn’t- couldn’t talk- I’d- I’d tell you,” and when he says _you_ he doesn’t look at Peggy at all, but at the swell of her stomach - Peggy wonders if he forgot that actions have consequences, monsters tend to - and swallows hard, “I’d tell you, okay? I’m not nobody important, just muscle for hire to make a few dollars on the side. Now just- hey, where you going?”

Peggy has already stood up. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr Zandow. I will now hand you over to my colleague, Agent Thompson, as per your request.”

“Hey- hey!” he shouts after her, the metal table scrapes as he pulls at his cuffs, but it would take someone a lot stronger and a lot better than Mr Zandow to move it. “You didn’t tell me about- you didn’t-!”

She slams the door, and smiles sharply at Dooley, who stands guard outside the door. His mouth twitches a little, before he gets it under control. “Excellent work, Agent Carter,” he tells her, clapping her on the shoulder before making for the bullpen.

Whatever test this was, whether he even knew he was testing her until that moment, she knows she’s passed with flying colours.

* * *

Howard Stark is exonerated just after summer begins. She’s large, uncomfortable, and she’s sorely tempted to punch his grinning face as he gets off his private jet, but his expression falls as his eyes land on her.

“You didn’t tell him?” She says to Mr. Jarvis out of the corner of his mouth.

“I used my judgement,” the butler says stiffly, “I flatter myself that I know Mr. Stark well enough to see that if he knew he would have returned immediately and promptly been arrested. And I flatter myself that I know you well enough that you would have run yourself ragged trying to save him from his own mess.”

She glares at him, but there’s no heat in it, and no time to come up with some witty rejoinder as Howard has reached them. “Peggy,” he says, voice breaking with horror.

“None of that,” she scolds him on instinct, before reaching out to give his hand a squeeze as a non-verbal apology, a wordless absolution. “Let’s get you home, hmm?”

* * *

One of the biggest drawbacks of being pregnant, other than the constant discomfort and attention, is not being able to drink. Peggy has never so much wanted to get completely plastered as she does that night, as Mr. Jarvis and Ana unpack Howard’s things and present a four course meal that tastes like ashes in her mouth and she tries to tell him everything that happened in his absence. Tells him about Leviathan, Leet Brannis, the man in the green suit, all of which are easy in comparison to when she reaches the docks-

Howard Stark is very, very good at pretending not to care about things. He scares away women he could find himself loving with benders that end up in the tabloids, conceals his fear with sarcasm and irreverence, calls weapons that could end the world _babies_ so that he doesn’t have to think too much about what he’s capable of.

It is beyond him to pretend he doesn’t care about this. “Steve would fucking kill me,” he says hoarsely when she’s done, when she feels like she’s carved her fucking soul into pieces and laid it out before him, and his cheeks are sopping wet. It is the second time she’s seen him cry, the first being on the first fourth of July after the war was over and he realised Steve would never see twenty-seven. She hears what he’s not saying: _I should have died. I should have died rather than this happen._

“No,” Peggy says, reaches for his hand, holds it and squeezes until he looks into her eyes, “he wouldn’t.”

* * *

She sleeps over at Howard’s - she’s too bone tired to protest when he offers her his own bed, knows there’s no point arguing with him when he’s decided to be a martyr, and doesn’t feel like she can face the outside world just yet after rehashing everything in excruciating detail. When she goes back to the Griffith, she feels like she’s crossing over into a different world, and it’s not just the opulence of Howard’s house compared to the hotel - it’s the warmth, the ache, the sweet press of pain when you rip the scab off a wound and let the air sting it. Howard had offered the night before, and thrice that morning, to give her an apartment of her own - _pick a house! Any house! -_ and she’s going to take the offer. As kind as Mrs Fry has been, the Griffith was never somewhere she could raise a child - too small, too cramped, too close.

She’s ready to close this chapter of her life. Most of it.

Angie’s hair is still in curlers when she opens the door, and she opens the door wider when she sees Peggy’s face despite the sickly pallor of her skin and the wanness of her smile. “Angie?” Peggy asks, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her with an audible click. The other woman doesn’t reply, instead walks over to her mirror, stares at her own face. “Angie?”

“Sarah told me she saw you with Howard Stark,” Angie says, obviously trying to be peppy, bright, bubbly, and anyone else would fall for it. Angie really is a wonderful actress. But Peggy knows Angie, better than she knows anyone still living, and she sees the ache beneath the act. “I should have guessed a girl like you would already have a fella, I mean, you could have _told_ me, I get he was on the run, but I wouldn’t have said anything. Who’d believe me, you know? Although, probably if they got a look at you- well.”

Peggy opens her mouth to speak, but Angie rambles on, yanking her curlers from her head and ripping out locks of hair in the process, the motions jerky and frantic. “He knows, I guess? He’s alright with it? He better be, or I’ll kick his ass, multi-millionaire or not. I figure he was, you were out all night, long time no see, and you’re tough enough to hand him his ass. That why Mr. Fancy shadows you sometimes? You’re his boss’ girl, looking after you while he was away? I mean, he could have fucking done that earlier, you know, you don’t deserve- but not that you don’t deserve to be happy Peg, and if Howard Stark makes you happy then whoopee, but if not-”

“I’m not with Howard,” Peggy interrupts, unable to listen to more as Angie works herself up into a frenzy. Angie blinks, once, twice. A hand rises and pushes down on the side of her head where she’s just torn a hunk of hair off, and she winces like she hadn’t felt the pain before then.

“You’re not with Howard, but you call him Howard?”

“I knew him during the war,” Peggy says, “I fell in love during the war, but not with him. And- Steve Rogers is dead.”

“Roge- Captain America?” Angie repeats faintly, her eyes lighting up with dull recognition, “You were with- oh my _god_ you’re-”

“If you say Betty Carver I may have to kill you.”

Angie’s on the floor then, thumping down and putting her face in her knees. She laughs, and then sobs. “Well that’s fucking awful, English. God, I’m such a-”

“-good friend.” Peggy finishes for her. She can’t get down on the floor, not in her condition, and even if she could she wouldn’t be able to get up again, so she compromises and perches on Angie’s bed. “I was with Howard last night, but not- not like that. He’s offered me a place to live, Angie. Big enough for both of us and the baby, when they come.”

Angie’s head snaps up. Her eyes are so beautiful. She is so beautiful. “Us?” She says rawly.

“If you’d like,” Peggy says carefully, feeling for the second time in two days like she’s holding her heart in her hands, “if you’d want.”

She doesn’t see Angie move, she’s that fast, but she feels her arms around her neck, smells her shampoo as her loose curls tickle her nose. “Yes, yes, yes!” Angie shrieks, her body a live wire again, alight, all bright, and Peggy laughs. She only stops when she feels Angie's lips on hers, but only because she is so busy reciprocating. She tastes like sweets and sugar and strawberries, and Peggy loves her, Peggy loves her, Peggy  _loves_ _her._ She thinks she's loved her the first time she saw her, the first time she held her, the first time Angie slid that ring on her finger and she knew it meant everything even when it should have meant nothing. She loves her. She  _loves_ her. 

If she could live in a moment, she would live in this one.

**Author's Note:**

> There may be a short epilogue after the baby is born, but I felt the fic itself ended there. I hope you enjoyed reading, please leave comments and kudos if so!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at: [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com)


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